Skin Game

by J. D. Allen

  The small glance Banks made to the camera in the corner was almost imperceptible as he picked up his lost weapon. This was a performance for the benefit of the viewing end of that feed. It had to look like he was beating up Jim for the camera, while he was deciding whether he really wanted to beat Jim to a pulp or believe the story.

  “You can beat on me all you like. But he’s doing it. Zant’s taking your girls. Selling them in Mexico.”

  “Motherfucker.” He looked down. Shook his head. Walked toward Jim, knife pointed at the ground. “Gonna have to. Private feed in his office. If I don’t kill you …”

  So Zant was watching. Evidently with no sound. Banks pulled Jim up off the cold concrete once again and gave him a blow to the ribs, still holding him close. “Tell me about Alexis.” The punch connected, but it wasn’t as hard as should have been. Jim overreacted, jerking. “Is that what Zant did with her?” His big eyes narrowed.

  Jim balanced himself. So, Banks did know Jim’s cousin. Most had. She’d lived with Zant for over a year. She thought the scumbag was going to marry her. Delusions of a young dancer in Vegas. A showgirl, taken in by the money, the jewelry, the nice trips. But she learned who Zant was in a hurry and she’d wanted out. Not many people got to walk away from the man with the knowledge Alexis had—thanks to Jim’s doing some things he hated. All that and he’d ended up still owing Zant in the long run.

  She’d asked and Jim had intervened, made her disappear. The same way he had from Ohio eight years before. New name. New city. New everything. Even Jim had no clue where she’d ended up. Cost him every dime he’d manage to save and gamble for. Found a body, set it up to look like she was dead. After the funeral, Zant nailed him. Jim hadn’t put a thing over on the fucker. But he gave Jim a deal anyway. Zant was to leave her alone, never search her out. And Jim would owe him … favors. And the big man had called on that marker more than once.

  Each time Jim got the call, Zant toyed with him. Had him do things, small things. Make one piece of evidence disappear, supply another to take its place. None of it had hurt anyone so far. The biggest cost had been Jim’s integrity. Amazing how much a guy missed something like that. Something unseen was virtually irreplaceable. It was a gaping hole that Jim tried to fill with Scotch as often as possible.

  Here stood Banks. The big man looked concerned about Alexis. As Jim suspected, there was a soft spot for the ladies. “You knew her?”

  “Was her protection for a while. She was a sweet girl.”

  Jim tried to go on the offensive. Landed one punch to the chest before Banks threw him off.

  “Is she dead?”

  Jim rolled away. He again found himself on his knees. “No. She’s not. Last I knew, she was in a safe place. But Zant appears to be unhappy with me. And that’s my weakness, isn’t it? Puts her at risk again.”

  Banks lifted Jim to his feet. “I got no orders to kill her. Just you. Fuck. I always liked her. Was afraid she’d been dead this whole time and he’d lied to me about you and the arrangement.” A good punch to the breadbox made Jim double over. He spit some blood from the cut lip for show.

  “I can’t take you being easy on me much longer, big guy. He’ll use Alexis too if I can’t stop the trafficking now and nail him. He’ll have her killed as soon as he can find her. And we both know he’ll find her.”

  Banks slowed. His big leathery face contorted with the strain of such a large decision. Let Jim go or kill him. “I have to hurt you.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  He pulled Jim up. “Yes. I do.” He placed the blade at his shoulder and shoved. “Sorry, man.”

  Jim growled, maybe screamed. He wasn’t sure what it was. It fucking hurt. Banks’s aftershave and his own blood made for a very unpleasant odor and it filled his senses, mixing with searing pain as the sting of the metal tore through his shoulder.

  Oh shit. He was going to pass out. Couldn’t do that. The floor beneath his feet was undulating like a breaking wave about to crash over him.

  “Hold your shit, Bean.” His body jerked as Banks maneuvered them so his back was to the camera. Zant couldn’t see more than broad shoulders and bald head. “Take the knife, return the favor, and go. Keys are in the red van, over the visor.”

  “Really?” Seemed too easy. Jim didn’t have time to think, much less the ability. He head butted the big bouncer. When Banks’s head whipped back, Jim did an easy spin and kick move. None of which helped his own brain function, but even with the major miss, the little contact of his boot to Banks’s upper arm and the whiplash took the bouncer off balance. Jim grabbed the blade and twisted, hard. Banks let it go. Jim stabbed with little aim.

  The blade penetrated Banks’s upper thigh as he fell backward. The big man yelled in pain and rolled to grab his wound. Jim hoped he hadn’t just castrated the guy.

  He glanced up at the camera. Time to go. Jim hoped it had all happened fast enough to be convincing on film. If Zant knew that Banks had let him off that loading dock, even with a stab wound and a busted lip, Banks would be a dead man. The bouncer was not the only killer on Zant’s friend list.

  And that was now Jim’s number-one problem.

  36

  “They got the girls back too.”

  The words were like acid on Jim’s tongue. His rage at Zant for taking Erica was about to eat him alive. Somehow knowing the asshole had the girls was like salt in an already burning wound. He needed to act but they were at a dead end. They still had no real lead on the Thin Man. Hitting Zant in his office would be a suicide mission, and they had no way to know he was even in the country, much less his penthouse.

  Inactivity was churning in his gut.

  They were in the emergency room getting his shoulder fixed up when Ely had called. The ambulance carrying Lola and Connie had been carjacked at a rest area. The driver hurt, the girls gone.

  Miller shook his head, though painkillers slowed his actions. “How the fuck?” The detective was in a hospital room. His arm had been cleaned and stitched and his right leg had been set from a nasty compound break and was hanging in a strange contraption with pulleys and ropes. He was alive. It had been a close call, though. The rolling sedan had almost crushed him.

  “I don’t know. The whole thing was a crash and grab. Someone working with Sister Nora had to have leaked it.” Oscar peered around the curtain of the tiny hospital room window. “We’re out of allies and not likely to acquire many more since most everyone who has helped us has ended up dead.”

  His words were cold, slow. The calm worried Jim. And now Miller was a sitting duck, too injured to get out of the hospital.

  “How did they know the route? It was last minute, untraceable. I feel like they’re sleeping with us.” Jim paced back to the door and looked out into the hallway. A woman shuffling along with an IV tower. A nurse. Nothing threatening.

  Miller sipped water through a straw, then croaked out one word: “Broady.” He tried to sit up but the IV lines in both his arms made it hard for him to adjust. O rushed over to help.

  “Broady took Erica. Recognize the bike. Those black and yellow leathers. I was out on a scene one night and he stopped by. I teased him about those leathers for weeks. The asshole looked like a fucking bee.” Miller moved his arm. Inspected the bandage. “And that was his gun. Polished nickel.”

  Jim paced, then propped his weight against the far wall of the room as the nurse came in. “So Detective fucking Broady put out the BOLOs and someone spotted your car on the move. Good luck for him, bad for us. He closed in and took you out. With more flair than he would have liked, is my guess.” Jim seethed over the thought of the dirty cop having his hands on Erica. It was time to get proactive.

  “I know you are cops and all”—the nurse scanned the room, then looked at Miller—“but you need some rest.” She then gave the other two men in the room a glance.

  “We’re about to finish up.”r />
  She keyed something into the computer in the wall, updating his chart. “Good.”

  “Miss?” She looked up. Oscar flashed her that heart-melting smile. His face changed from cold and deadly to one of a mother concerned for a sick child. “You know how it is after an accident … especially one with a cop involved. There’ll probably be some other reporters, maybe even other cops who want to ask him a bunch of silly questions that can wait a few days. Just in case, I’d like to send a friend over to keep watch over our young detective here. Some pretty shady characters have threatened him. I promise, my guy will stand at the end of the hall and not get in the way of all the good work you ladies do.”

  His charm worked.

  “I guess. If he’s out of the way and don’t scare the other patients.”

  “No, ma’am.” He grinned again. “Scout’s honor.”

  She snapped the lid closed. She looked skeptical. “He best not, or out he goes. And you two need to scoot. Soon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Detective Miller needs some peace.”

  “Ma’am.” Oscar winked as she left. Jim was sure he heard her giggle.

  “How do you do that shit? Women fall all over you,” Miller said with more clarity than he’d managed a moment ago.

  Oscar shrugged. “I mean what I say. Honesty is something women feel.”

  “We’ll go talk to the nun. See what we can get out of her, who she thinks is the weak link in her chain. There has to be something connecting all this. Chris’s cartoon signature being in that bathroom stall was a crumb, a message.” Jim patted the blanket-covered foot of Miller’s uninjured leg. “You feel better. Call if you need us.” Jim gave him a clean cell.

  Miller opened it, glanced through the preprogrammed numbers. Jim, Oscar, Ely. “Got it.”

  “I’ll have someone here in ten minutes. You won’t see him. But he’ll be watching.” Oscar slipped the detective a small .380 pony under the sheet by his good hand. “For vermin and such.”

  Miller nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Broady is the man in the yellow shoes, only the shoes weren’t shoes at all. Motorcycle boots.” He shook his head. Seven-year-old girl wouldn’t have known that. “But Broady’s beer gut eliminates him as the other player in the hotel, the Thin Man.”

  “Yep.” They were pulling up to the church. It was getting late, dinnertime. He wondered if the sister would be there.

  “If this is a dead end, we need to pay Zant a visit. Get proactive.”

  Oscar looked over at Jim’s arm all tied up in a sling. “How’d that go for you last time?”

  “Shut up.”

  O nodded and put the Escalade in park. “You may be right, but I think it best we know who’s at the table before we throw all in, don’t you think?”

  “I think about Erica being in one of those crates and I think I’m ready to kill Andrew Zant and all his demented friends right up in his penthouse office in front of that giant snake tank.” Jim took a deep breath. Nothing got a person into more trouble than uncontrolled emotion in this business.

  Oscar got out, Jim followed. Oscar made it to the door first but turned back to Jim, blocking his entrance. “You change your mind about a gun? The stakes are high. Someone’s gonna die.”

  He chuckled. O looked like he was waiting on Jim to have some Dr. Phil breakthrough. “Don’t you worry. I saved your ass at the ranch, didn’t I?”

  Oscar seemed to search his face to make sure he was ready for the coming storm. He must have found something convincing enough. “Lucky break.” He entered the church. Sister Nora was exiting the sanctuary. She hustled to them.

  “You have news?”

  Jim hadn’t expected that. They were here to question her, not give her an update. “We were hoping you could help us, Sister.” Jim tamped down his anger to prevent making the nun skittish. “We want to find the girls, but Erica has been taken as well. We believe a police officer aided in her abduction. What we need to know is who may have assisted from within your organization.”

  “Mine?” She backed up a step, put her hand to her heart in surprise or insult. Jim really didn’t care which.

  “Who knows the route and destinations when you start this enterprise? Who is privy to the underground railroad?”

  “Only a few know most of the players, and they don’t know each other.” She took a deep breath and started walking toward her office. “Even I only know the first, sometimes maybe the second handoff. It protects the girls and the participants. And it changes frequently. I mean, it’s a text and telephone network. I call my contact, I get a runner that helps, and then that contact arranges the next drop, and that contact person arranges the next.”

  She opened the door and held it for them. She shuffled behind a dark wood desk so large it made her look like a child. “We give them a letter that indicates the number of jumps. For this one I was obviously A. The next will be B. The idea is that there are five jumps so pimps, abusive boyfriends, husbands, or family lose track even if they try.” She glared at the wall. “Most don’t bother, but it does happen.” She turned back to Jim. He was standing behind the chair facing her desk. “On E, we place them somewhere for short-term needs. Medical, psychological, rehab.”

  “So who all knew about today’s jump?”

  “Me, the medicals, the driver.”

  “You know the driver?” Oscar sat, stretched out his long legs.

  Jim was too wound up to sit.

  “Deacon of a Baptist church here in Las Vegas.” She sat. “Not likely one to be convinced to divulge anything. He was injured but is at home now.”

  “And the others? The medicals?”

  “Tricia is a trauma nurse who has been involved with this church for years. Highly unlikely.” Sister Nora sifted through some notes and papers on her desk. Stopped to think. Jim noticed her Bible, tattered and loved, as she picked it up to retrieve a slip of paper underneath. He wondered what all she considered safe stored beneath its passages.

  “Keith Worth.” She handed O the slip of paper. “It was his second time working with us. He’s missing.”

  “So he could have taken off with the girls?” He took the paper.

  “Possible. Jonathan, the driver, had a head wound. Doesn’t remember much that would be helpful.”

  Jim thought back on the morning, dropping off the girls. Tricia had carried Connie. “I don’t remember much about Keith. Do you interview people prior to using them in the program?”

  “Of course.”

  Jim came around the chair to be more intimate with her, to calm her. To not seem like a looming authority in the back of the room. He sat next to O, tried for relaxed. He was failing, but it was better.

  She relaxed a little, even sat. Thought for minute. “I interviewed him a few weeks ago. He helped with a young runaway the other night.”

  Oscar looked at the paper. “Describe his face for me.”

  “Middle-aged, but not too wrinkled. Narrow nose. Brownish hair.” She clasped her hands.

  “His build?”

  “Terribly thin.”

  Jim thought back and tried to picture him. The man hadn’t been his concern at the time. He was usually pretty observant. Maybe the condition of those girls had shaken him enough to miss something that important. Still, lots of guys were thin. “I don’t remember him being that thin.”

  She shrugged. “The EMT uniform goes a ways to hide it, those full shirts. Supplies in his pockets. He was in a suit the first time I met him. On his way to Bible study, he said. The slacks and the fitted jacket made him look as though he was close to starving.”

  He and Erica had been that close to him and had no clue. “The Thin Man.”

  Oscar sat up, and his size seemed to double as he leaned forward. “You checked his references?” He held up the paper.

  “I did.�
� She looked at the desk. “You think this man was not who he represented?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Jim stood. “What were his credentials?”

  She riffled through more papers on her desk. “Westside Medical transport for four years. He was laid off last year.” She handed him the sheet. It had an address and phone number. All most likely faked.

  “I have one more question.” Jim brought her attention back to him.

  Sister Nora also stood, not to be intimidated by him. He liked that. “Yes?”

  “Chris Floyd. You recognized Erica’s name and her face, but you didn’t say anything. Chris has been here before?”

  She sighed. “Of course. She is also part of the team, so I would not bring her name into any conversation with anyone without her consent. Chris has made some nasty men in the area very angry by sneaking their wives, girlfriends, or working girls out of the city. Several cases a year come from her. Her day job is unique for finding those that need our special kind of help, and she said once she had some kind of inside contact. The troubled go looking for money before spirituality, Mr. Bean. She offers them a way out. She is a wonderful human being.”

  “Was she ever here when Keith was in the building? Was she working the other case last week when he was here?”

  “Yes. They were both here for the runaway. Keith checked her. Cleared her to travel and left.”

  “He left before Chris?”

  “Yes. She and I waited with the girl until her transport arrived. A man from over the California border. We’ve used him often for those heading west.”

  Oscar glanced at Jim, then back to the nun. “Was that a week ago Friday?”